Photon emission characteristics of avalanche photodiodes

Temporal decay of photon emission from avalanche photo- diodes APDs is demonstrated. The steep rise of the reverse voltage can cause a higher probability of photon emission. For a silicon ava- lanche photodiode, the photon emission has a broad spectral distribution from 500 to 1100 nm with two peaks at 750 and 994 nm, respectively. The number of emitted photons increases by 44 Mcount/ sm A sr as the APD's reverse current increases. This suggests that the reverse current, instead of the reverse voltage, applied to the APD is the main determi- nant of the photon emission. It is furthermore shown that the distribution of the photon emission is a super-Poisson distribution. © 2005 Society of